ABC 774

SUBJECTS: Labor leadership; Budget surplus

E&OE……… 

John Faine: First of all why does it matter whether Julia Gillard did or didn’t know or was or wasn’t preparing for a contest with Kevin Rudd all that time ago?

Christopher Pyne: It matters because she told the Australian public that the first she knew about taking over from Kevin Rudd was on the day of the leadership change in 2010 and it all apparently was a tremendous surprise to her.  Now, we know from the Four Corners program last night a number of Labor figures; Graham Richardson is one of them and the Prime Minister herself had information going back earlier than that. 

Faine: There was speculation.  Everyone was talking about it, you were talking about it, we were talking about it, everyone was talking about it. 

Pyne: That’s right and Julia Gillard confirmed last night that her office may well have been planning speeches in the event that she took over. 

Faine: Someone in her office may have drafted a speech.  Why does it even matter? 

Pyne: It matters because this Prime Minister has no credibility.  That’s the problem.  It’s just another straw on the camel’s back to break the credibility issue of the Prime Minister.  That’s the problem. 

Faine: Why is her credibility affected by whether she knew or didn’t know whether someone was drafting a speech for something that might happen?  I don’t understand the link. 

Pyne: Because yet again the Prime Minister is answering questions about her integrity, her credibility, what she knew and when.  I mean the Prime Minister has never been able to get out from under the rock of whether she tells the Australian people the whole truth.  Whether it’s the carbon tax, whether it’s the private health insurance rebate, whether it’s when she knew about the coup planned by Kevin Rudd.  From the moment Laurie Oakes asked that question at the national press club in 2010 that exposed that fact the while she kept Kevin Rudd talking in the Prime Minister’s office her henchmen were gathering the numbers – right through to last night John on Four Corners, it’s still going. 

Faine: So what, surely the issue really is that here we’ve got Alcoa, the banks, Qantas and Holden.  We’ve got people shedding jobs by the thousands around the country and you, the Labor factional leaders, all these people who are supposed to be showing us leadership in the face of this economic – I’m not going to call it a crisis, but challenge – you’re consumed by the trivia of who did or didn’t draft a speech a few years ago.  Quite frankly, it doesn’t matter. 

Pyne: Well, that’s the whole problem isn’t it?  The Labor Party is absolutely focussed on one thing and one thing only and that is there leadership. 

Faine: And so are you because you can extract some advantage from it. 

Pyne: But John, we’re not in Government.  They are and the problem for the public is the people who are supposed to have their hands on the levers of the economy are instead having their hands on the dialling machine on the telephone because they’re ringing each other constantly plotting in a divided and dysfunctional government rather than thinking about hope, reward and opportunity for the Australian people. 

Faine: And you’re contributing to their need to be defensive on this.  Can’t we all talk about and deal with and show some leadership on the things that matter, which is ensuring we don’t waste the mining boom, that the people whose jobs are being sacrificed because of the mining boom are able to find something else instead so we can ensure prosperity for future generations.

Pyne: Well, this may come as a surprise to some of your listeners, but I doubt it; my job is not to keep a bad Government in power for longer by making their life easier.  I think this is a contemptible Government, I think it’s a dishonest Government, I think it’s an incompetent Government and the sooner that I can help remove it the better. 

Faine: So even though it’s a Government that’s doing it’s best to deal with the challenges the economy is posing you’re not prepared to give it some air? 

Pyne: It’s not doing it’s best to deal with the challenges the country is facing.  It is in fact doing its worst.  It is utterly focused on whether Kevin Rudd or Bill Shorten or Greg Combet or whomever leads it.  It’s divided, it’s dysfunctional, it’s a soap opera of a Government which relies on this constant parade of Robert Oakeshott and Tony Windsor and Andrew Wilkie and Adam Bandt across our television screens at night saying whether they will or whether they won’t, behaving coquettishly.  The public are thoroughly sick of it.  They want an unambiguous Government that can get on with the job and that’s why we need an election to deliver that. 

Faine: Can we flick the switch please Christopher Pyne?  Do you have any suggestions; if I had a magic wand and I installed Tony Abbott as Prime Minister tomorrow and you became a senior minister in his Government what would you be doing that isn’t now being done? 

Pyne: The first thing we would be doing is getting spending under control.  We’d be trying to stop the Government competing with the banks in the marketplace for borrowing money.  The Government is borrowing $100 million a day and in doing that it is competing with the banks and that’s one of the reasons that interest rates are going up rather than coming down.  That’s the first thing. 

Faine: So you would go ahead with Joe Hockey’s plan to slash the public service and add to the ranks of people out of work? 

Pyne: The first thing we’d have to do is reduce the Government’s spending and stop borrowing money.  We do need to have a surplus; in fact we can’t just keep borrowing money to fund a spending addiction.  So an Abbott Government would get the books back in the black and start paying off the debt.  That would take pressure off the banks, it would reduce interest rates which means people would not…

Faine:  When would you be in a surplus because there was some confusion last week with half a dozen different timelines and amounts mentioned in a few days about what an Abbott financial plan would be? 

Pyne: We have said that we’ll deliver a surplus in our first year of Government based on the fact the figures the Treasury have published. 

Faine: Your first year in Government, but Wayne Swan’s committing to do it even before then, but you’re saying you’ll do a better job. 

Pyne: Wayne Swan will never deliver surplus John and he’s delivered the four biggest deficits in Australia’s history.  Labor haven’t delivered a surplus since 1990.  The idea that he’ll deliver a surplus next year is quite simply laughable. 

Faine: Partly you’ll achieve your surplus by not having a mining tax, but slashing the public service? 

Pyne: There’s a range of ways to get spending under control.  I haven’t heard any suggestions that we will slash the public service, but we have said in the last election in 2010 that we would adjust the hiring policies so that we didn’t constantly replace the same number of public servants with new public servants.  It’s quite different to “slashing” the public service as you put it. 

Faine: Alright, apologises for my frustration, but I sense Australia is at this crucial time and we’re spending all our time consumed by nonsense rather than the challenges that genuinely face us. 

Pyne: I understand your frustration. 

Faine: On Valentines Day Christopher Pyne I should be more friendly. 

Pyne: I understand your frustration.  It’s a frustration that I share and the public share.  That is because of this ludicrous hung parliament which simply hasn’t worked. 

Faine: A minority rather than hung parliament. 

Pyne: Well, a minority government. 

Faine: A minority rather than hung parliament. 

Pyne: Well, you can choose to call it that way but a lot of people call it a hung parliament, so, whatever. 

Faine: Let’s not split hairs.  I’m indebted to you and thank you for your time yet again. 

Pyne: It’s a pleasure. 

ENDS